A Misunderstood Machine

On September 20th, 1989, Apple released the Macintosh Portable, the first true mobile Mac and a much-maligned machine. It didn’t sell well and is very rare today–not due to any particular design failure, but because the original price was a whopping $6,500-$7,300 ($11,288 to $12,677 in 2009 dollars). It wasn’t the only Mac to cost that much, but others in that price range offered top-of-the-line performance. The Portable was both too expensive and too underpowered to catch on. Its large size didn’t help, either.

Apple vastly improved upon the design two years later with the PowerBook 100, the first true Mac notebook. For now, though, it’s time to honor the design achievements of Apple’s first battery-powered computer. I’ve found there’s no better way to do that than take it apart on my trusty workbench.

Hmmm…I was just starting my MBA coursework in 1989. I still worked on my DEC Rainbow and wrote code in dbase II or III or CBasic Compiler. The very idea of a laptop computer was simply beyond the pale. We were happy to work on PC made by long defunct companies. The exciting news of the day was getting Sideways to print horizontal spreadsheets in Lotus 1-2-3, and learning all of the WordStar codes to insert in our case analyses, such as running the numbers on the costs of debeaking chickens and outfitting them with red eye lenses to keep them from cannibalizing each other. (The answer turns out to be using red lights in the hen house, as was revealed at the end of the case, but what did we know?).

MIssing from the article was information on which version of Mac OS the portable ran, and a screen shot of the main screen when it booted up and the Apple logo of the day. I finally got into Macs with a PowerMac when it came out. 🙂

I worked as a tech for ComputerLand during the 1980’s-90’s, where I received my Apple certifications. These were great machines, but certainly had their problems. Many had defective motherboards, and I got to the point I could tear down these units in my sleep 🙂

I, too, have a Portable that I purchased about 6 years ago for nostalgia… even comes with the nifty custom padded case. Not realizing how easy it is to teardown makes me want to dig in and take some pics of it sometime. Thanks!

Very interesting article. No problem at all to click through 18 pages.

Now, why don’t they build iMacs and MacMinis with that sort of accessability? Though I’m not sure if Apple really wants people mucking about in their computer’s innards. Just kidding. Apple doesn’t cater to the type of people who are going to be field-stripping their Macs except for the top-of-the-line Mac Pros. I just think it’s slick the way that Portable was designed to be taken apart like that.

Yeah, but you’re missing the point — there’s NO reason this has to be on 18 separate pages, unless they’re just trying to generate more page views for their advertisers (ya think?).

In any case, I resent being manipulated like this…like some trained animal being made to jump through hoops, so they’re only getting 2 page views from me. They can take the other 16 pages/paragraphs and shove ’em.

I’m sorry if you don’t like slideshows, but no hard feelings if you click twice, once, or not at all–and we make the number of slides prominent so you can decide whether you wish to proceed or not. Ultimately it’s up to you to decide whether it’s worth your while to click, watch ads on TV, flip past ads in magazines, etc, etc. But if there isn’t a critical mass of people who find these slideshows to be worth a few clicks, it’d be pointless to do ’em.

As I’ve said before (and will probably say again) I can’t please everybody so I try to please myself. I find slideshows to be OK, so I do them (and have tweaked the format several times to make them easier to view, and will probably do so again). I don’t like more textual articles being chopped up too much, so I don’t break most stories into multiple pages at all, and when I do, I break them up only every 1000-1200 words or so (at many sites, it’s more like every 400 words). I can’t stand “keyword” ads that involve linking words in stories to popup ads, so you’ve never see them here.

On page 18 there’s an error regarding the storage capacity of an iPod touch — it should be “8 to 32 gigabytes” not “8 to 32 megabytes”.

Great article. I remember seeing one of these behemoths back-in-the-day when I worked for Citibank. They packed an impressive amount of technology inside them for their time, and its nice to see that technology exposed in a teardown.

I only ever saw one of these being used once. A writer for one of the bay area computer papers/mags and a prominent BMUG personality (carried it around in a shoulder bag on his bike, I was to read later) had one and was interviewing an exhibitor at MacWorld. He had it partially pulled out of it’s Apple-made soft case and awkwardly propped on a corner of the exhibitors table while typing into it as the guy talked. Knowing it was 16 lbs and that expensive made me think a bit less of the writer. That degree of mac-centeredness was slightly nutty. When he (or was it another at the time similarly popular mac activist/writer?) referred to a “St. Steve”, it no longer sounded tongue-in-cheek, but servile. It was not a mac portable, but a mac luggable, something that was even seen as kinda laughable at the time. What great innovations did it foretell the later advent of? I’m at a loss to think of one. It was an SE stuffed clunkily into a smaller space.

Harry, while I, too, am not a huge fan of multipage articles and slide shows, I will give you credit for making a static-position navigation bar at the TOP of the image, so that I need not move my mouse one pixel to click ‘next’. The slideshows I abandon are the ones where the nav bar dynamically moves about the page based on image size and text; where I have to constantly scroll, hunt and point just to find it lurking beneath every varied image.

As long as you make your slideshows this easy to click through, I’m happy to give you the ad hits. I even did a click-through to one of your sponsors to show my appreciation. Might even buy what they’re selling.

> Knowing it was 16 lbs and that expensive made me think a bit less
> of the writer. That degree of mac-centeredness was slightly nutty

He had the last laugh, though, because he’s had the same writing workflow for over 20 years, GUI for over 20 years, laser printing for over 20 years. Now he probably has a MacBook Air which is 1.2 kilos.

Some people are Mac-centric because they’re creativity-centric, not technology-centric. Using a PC is still hard today, but in 1989 it was ludicrous. And paper has been obsolete since 1984. So forgive some of us who simply aren’t interested in computers but have digital work to do.

[…] down memory lane. Harry was letting us know that Technologizer blogger Benj Edwards had written a 20th anniversary teardown post about the first truly mobile Mac — the Mac Portable. Why is this a trip down memory lane for me […]

[…] From Technologizer: The difference between the Mac Portable and the iPhone or iPod Touch (seen here) is a stunning reminder of technology’s relentless, progress. One strains your arm like a 16 pound briefcase, the other fits in your back pocket. A 16 MHZ CPU powers one, a 412-Mhz or 532-Mhz CPU powers the other. One includes one megabyte of RAM, the other includes 128 megabytes. One contains a 40MB fixed disk, the other 8,000 to 32,000 megabytes. One has a 2,400 bit-per-second phone modem, the other contains a 54,000,000 bit-per-second wireless network interface and a wireless telephone. Most staggeringly, one cost $12,667 (adjusted to 2009 dollars), and the other costs $99-$299. The difference? Twenty years. […]